This essay answers the question What good is anthropology? via a discussion of Susan Sontag's review of photographer Diane Arbus's 1972 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Sontag asserts that Arbus, in depicting people whom Sontag smugly regards as “ugly,” is necessarily exploiting them. I perceive an exact comparison between Arbus's photographs and anthropology as an epistemological project and a representational practice. Like Arbus's photographs, anthropology is good for subverting the privileged protocol articulated by critics like Sontag, who are prepared to contemplate “ugly” people, vastly different from themselves, but only through an optic of pity or of vicarious indignation at the supposedly unrelentingly grim conditions under which such people are imagined to live their lives.

中文翻译：

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特权的沾沾自喜

本文回答了“人类学有什么好处？”这个问题。通过讨论 Susan Sontag 对摄影师 Diane Arbus 1972 年在现代艺术博物馆举办的回顾展的评论。桑塔格断言，阿勃丝在描绘桑塔格自鸣得意地认为“丑陋”的人时，必然是在剥削他们。我认为阿布斯的照片和人类学之间的精确比较是一种认识论项目和一种再现实践。与阿布斯的照片一样，人类学有助于颠覆桑塔格等批评家所阐述的特权协议，他们准备思考与自己截然不同的“丑陋”人，但只是通过对所谓无情的严峻条件的怜悯或替代愤慨来看待人们想象这样的人将过着这样的生活。